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IMF

Hi,
in the last 2 years my country (Portugal) is passing in some difficult times. The situation is getting very hard to stand.
Our avarage salary is to low compared with others. Since 1974 (last revolution we had), we left a dictatorship and went into a democracy.
But since then the relation between the income and expenses is negative. We (the state) spend more money then he can earn.

Last month the prime minister nad financial minister anounce that we will have more taxes, a lot more !!
Unemployment is getting higher and everything is getting more expensive. In last months thousands of young people left the country looking for better
oportunities.
i have an average salary and the money i have wevery month is getting lower and lower, but people that receive the minimum salary are making a tremendous efford to keep living.

Not only Portugal is in a bad situation, Irland is bad (not so bad) but Greece is also in a very difficult situation. Spain probably will ask FMI for help.
Some other countries could also have problems in a near future.

We listen every day to conspiracy theory about IMF. They profict with others problems. The decisions our goverment take could be according to IMF ideas.
Many people say there are some "groups" that plan to some kind of world domination that involves money and power. They would influence countries decisions by
putting them in a financial bad situation so that the could be easily dominated... When we hit the ground, "they" can buy everything at realy low prices.
Our south region (Algarve) is already dominated by people from England, Germany, and others. Soon the rest of the country will be in hands of other countries, including China.
On top of that there is corruption, bad politicions, and so many other factors that don't help a bit.

I don't know where this is going to end.... but i think it's not good for anyone, exception for "the others".
If Greece, Portugal, maybe Spain, falls in deap sh... other countries will shake a lot...
if we get out of the "euro zone" it will be bad for us, but also bad for the rest of the group... the stability of Euro will be damage.

It is a really bad situation for all concerned. Greece and Portugal definitely seem to be the worst effected, followed by Ireland. I really don't know what the answer is, but I think it would be a really bad idea for any country to leave the Euro as it really wouldn't help them. Reverting to a country's own currency would make it worth so little that no other country would want to trade with them.

I'm so glad the UK didn't join the Euro single currency. London has been one of the biggest financial centres in the world since the world banking system was created. Only Germany really has anything on a level in Europe and are now stuck facing the situation of other member states knocking at their doors for money.

I think the only way the European Union will ever work correctly would be to form a central government and make each country in Europe a State of a country called Europe. However I can't see that ever happening as each country has such diverse cultures, languages and unique identities that they would never agree to merge into a larger whole. And I can see their point fully, although in logical reality the only way to evolve is for countries to remove the borders and become one.

I can imagine how bad it feels to have people from other countries taking advantage of the bad economy and buying up properties for not much money. I know a lot of people from the UK retire and either move there or buy a holiday home there. In the UK we just see a lot of people from Ex Eastern Block countries (Poland, Romania etc) moving here and taking all the low paid jobs as they are willing to work for less, meaning less jobs for all the unemployed already here. The problem is that a lot of them don't speak very good English making it hard to communicate, which also leads to them sticking together and forming their own communities in parts of larger cities.

The UK announced this week that we have just come out of recession. So many people moan about the current UK government and the measures they have taken to fix the recession. They just don't get how badly our last Labour government got the country into debt. And the sad truth is that all these people who don't understand this will just vote the old government back in at the next elections and they will do it all over again.

And It doesn't exactly feel like it with the price of food and fuel, plus the number of people still being made redundant. Ford this week announced the closure of 2 of their UK manufacturing plants, including the Southampton Transit van factory, with the lose of 1300 jobs.

If you haven't played a classic game in years, it's never too late to start!

I think the only way the European Union will ever work correctly would be to form a central government and make each country in Europe a State of a country called Europe. However I can't see that ever happening as each country has such diverse cultures, languages and unique identities that they would never agree to merge into a larger whole. And I can see their point fully, although in logical reality the only way to evolve is for countries to remove the borders and become one.

I think that it could be a good solution, each country has their own culture, sure, but you can keep that. You have different cultures inside the same country.... North and South of many countries are very different. A common government could work. You could have a central administration and then local as well. Salaries and taxes could be equal to every country or state if you remove borders.
Taxes collected would go to a center state that would deliver them equally to all states. Laws would have to me equal to.
But sure that would be very hard to put in practice. and the big "man that you don't know who they are" would not like the idea.
It is good for the "man with power" to have week economies so they can "play" with.

But a very important note is that Portugal and Greece are in this situation mainly because of their own errors/corruption/bad decisions.
Only a small part of their problems can be credit to others.

The UK's problems were completely down to the corrupt banking system mostly, but also our last government borrowing more and more money until something had to give. The banks got away with pretty much everything, when in reality they should be responsible for a large percentage of the crisis and should have sorted it all out using their own money, no needing the government to find the money to fix it for them, which obviously means that had to come out of our taxes.

And yes I agree, unstable economies and governments are very desirable to the rich at the top of society, as they want to manipulate the economy, stock market and government spending/policies to their advantage. Remove trading borders and they lose a lot of their power, bring trade level across the whole EU. In reality this should of happened when the Euro was created, but it went wrong because each member state kept their own economy locked within their own borders, meaning the whilst the value of the Euro was constant, what you could buy with it varied greatly from country to country. A central government would eliminate that completely and all member states would be paying the same for everything. It is how Europe should have been working from the beginning. It's a mess and none of them will agree to anything that reduces the power in any individual country.

I suppose you can see the point of view in countries like Germany where their economy is very strong and individually they are worth most than a lot of the other countries put together. Desolve borders and they would lose their financial centre and the power to gives them to dictate European policy and sway decision.

If you haven't played a classic game in years, it's never too late to start!

Things are terrible here in Greece, no doubt. Well, thanks god that our island (Crete) as it stands, it's in far better situation than the rest of Greece, because we produce almost everything. It's not old news that we mainly feed the rest of Greece with many essential products.

The bad thing in general, is that every 6 months we get a loan, and the same again. It feels like an endless loop. When this will be stop actually, no-one knows for sure.

If Germany wants money, then why they don't pay us the disaster of the WWII, along with other countires as well?